


Hold with Those Who Favour Fire

by Morbane



Category: Dragon Prince Trilogy - Melanie Rawn
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Banter, Constructive Criticism Welcome, F/F, First Time, Politics, Rival Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-01
Updated: 2014-01-01
Packaged: 2018-01-06 13:37:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1107495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morbane/pseuds/Morbane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At that pivotal Rialla, Ianthe chooses a different tent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hold with Those Who Favour Fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ryuutchi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ryuutchi/gifts).



> Thanks to Tielan for the beta!

Ribbons of clouds were fraying across the sky, blowing across the moons, as Sioned walked back to her tent – the troubled air complemented her own thoughts, just as it aggravated them. The breeze stroked skin turned uncomfortably sensitive by her thoughts of Rohan, and by the revelation of Roelstra's designs for her.

And yet, to find her bed occupied was the last thing she would have expected.

As Sioned tucked back the heavy wool drapes that separated her part of the tent from Hildreth's and Camigwen's bed rolls, the High Prince's most elegant daughter looked up at her. In the light of a single candle, placed low at the foot of the bed and shaded to prevent a silhouette from betraying her, Ianthe's neck, wrists, and fingertips glittered with silver, and her eyes glittered with an emotion Sioned could not read.

"Princess," Sioned said flatly, astounded. "Interloper," she added, equating the two.

"Lady Sioned," Ianthe murmured, as if she were giving an audience.

Sioned raised an eyebrow. "Courtesy, at least, is a welcome surprise."

"No less is it from you," Ianthe riposted. She smiled. "Insult is a strange thing, isn't it, _faradhi_? Both to give it and to receive it are matters of choice and interpretation. And so offense given, and taken, are akin to an understanding between the parties concerned."

"Are you saying that we understand each other, your grace?"

Ianthe inclined her head approvingly. "I believe we could. Come, sit," she said. "I have no desire to deprive you of your ease."

That was so laughably false that Sioned let it pass. Weighing the danger that Ianthe posed against her own curiosity, Sioned shrugged, slipped past the curtain, and let it fall behind her.

"And what do you desire?"

Ianthe took a long time to reply. The two women studied each other. Ianthe pointedly scrutinized Sioned's plain brown dress and her _faradhi_ rings, as well as the possessions stowed around the enclosure. Amused by so obvious a tactic, Sioned took the time to hang up her cloak, slip off her boots, let down her hair, and settle herself at a safe arm's length from Ianthe.

In the preceding days, she'd taken Ianthe's measure from below lowered lashes, or in brief, discreet glances; now she took Ianthe's coyness as a license to stare.

Ianthe's own eyelashes were long, dark, and fine, shading eyes the color of a summer sky at evening. Her skin, too, reminded Sioned of evening: the color of the eastern side of a dune as the light faded from the sky, a deceptively soft expanse, its natural glow accented slightly with fine powders. It occurred to Sioned that just as Rohan's eyes and complexion were the Desert at the height of day, Ianthe was the Desert at twilight, face framed by the darkness of her lovely sleek hair. It grimly amused Sioned to think of Ianthe as a shadow over her prince.

The princess's nose and chin were delicately pointed; her ears looked almost too delicate to bear the weight that swung from them, a spray of silver spikes that brushed her lovely throat. Her breasts were fuller than Sioned's own, and her waist barely wider. Impossible to imagine this woman in anything but silks and jewels. Except for Roelstra's present mistress, Roelstra's daughter was surely the most beautiful woman at the Rialla.

Yesterday, that astonishing beauty had bothered Sioned. Today, courted by the High Prince himself, she felt as though Ianthe's visit was also a kind of paying court.

"You know what I want," Ianthe said artlessly at last. Rohan, of course.

"And you seek to make that my concern?" As far as Ianthe knew – or should know – Sioned was indifferent to Rohan.

Ianthe gave her a half-smile, acknowledging the play. "Today our Desert princeling said that a man who truly loved you would give you emeralds as a wedding gift," she said. "And then he risked his life in a race with emeralds as the prize."

Sioned had cursed him as an idiot then, and cursed him again now. What use was subterfuge, when Rohan could not resist grand gestures?

"He's such a good little princeling, isn't he?" Ianthe purred. "Healthy, handsome, amiable, easily led in the princes' council. His adored older sister and his esteemed lady aunt want him to choose you. It seems he's falling in... line."

"Am I to accept your congratulations, then?" Sioned asked. "And your silver."

The barb did not appear to sting. "I admit, should our prince be infatuated with you, I'm disadvantaged. But our wager's not over yet," Ianthe said. "In fact, I had in mind a longer game."

"That matches your reputation, your grace," said Sioned.

Ianthe laughed. "Scheming? Ambitious? Clever, I hope," she said, dipping her head in mock modesty to glance at Sioned through her lashes. "So you do pay attention. How flattering. What else do they say of me?"

"That you are your father's daughter," Sioned said dryly. "That Rohan's life with you as his Chosen princess may be counted down in days from the moment you bear him a son."

"How complex of... them," Ianthe said, eyes narrowing only briefly. "I don't blame those who follow politics that they look at me and see my father. It only surprises me that no one looks at you, my lady, and sees Andrade."

Sioned knew that her own expression darkened. Ianthe smiled in satisfaction, and continued.

"Such a good boy, Rohan, and you have your own sense of duty, too, don't you? Raised to Andrade's purposes far more surely than I am bound to serve Roelstra's. At least, when I marry, I am not expected to hold my marriage vows secondary to any other."

"My vows are to the Goddess," Sioned hissed. She could not let that pass.

"As you say," said Ianthe indifferently. "But it's not the Goddess playing matchmaker, is it?"

Sioned began to regret provoking Ianthe's temper in the stands today. It had been maddening to watch Ianthe flirt with Rohan, and stand by with an indifferent mask, while both prince and princess pretended that Sioned was unworthy of notice. This, however, was not merely vexing – it was dangerous.

"Let us agree that Lady Andrade's purposes are not mine to question," she countered. "What of yours and your father's?"

"You mean the plot whereby I murder my husband and the father of my son, and hand the Desert over to my father?" Ianthe sneered. "In which I give the very man whose shadow I wish to escape more power than any prince has had in living memory? You haven't thought it through. If Rohan is expendable once his son is born, so am I. I assure you, Roelstra would value a grandson high above a daughter. Oh, he wouldn't threaten me. As long as I never crossed him." She tempered her voice; it lost its heat, but not its edge. "Why do you assume that my aims and my father's are one and the same?"

"What do my assumptions matter to you?" Sioned murmured. "Your grace."

"Good question," Ianthe breathed.

"I don't merely want you out of the way, Sunrunner," she said. "Of course I want to rule at Rohan's side. But... if we can come to understand each other... Stronghold needs a Sunrunner too. A strong one... like you."

So she had understood the import of Sioned's rings.

"You may not want Rohan, but I doubt you want to go back to life at Goddess Keep after being the talk of the Rialla. If Rohan wants you, he will treat you well." She laughed. "Especially if you stay aloof. It imparts a certain allure..."

Sioned's mouth was hanging inelegantly open. This, indeed, ran counter to all she'd assumed so far.

"You'd want your rival in your court?" she asked, incredulous. "You, who watches your father's mistresses go by like a parade?"

Ianthe smiled fully, then, as if in contemplation of complete victory. "I told you I don't doubt myself as a woman, Sunrunner," she said. She slid her foot out – leaned up on one knee – swayed towards Sioned – and claimed Sioned's still gaping mouth with her own.

Caged like precious pets at Castle Crag, rumor had it that all of Roelstra's daughters were strictly guarded against dalliance. But the role Sioned had watched Ianthe play with Rohan was that of a woman who – somehow – knew exactly what she wanted, and wasn’t afraid to pursue it. Sioned had had subtler, slower, more tender kisses; Ianthe was overeager, perhaps, but she was flattering in her fierceness, forcing Sioned to devote all of her attention to tongue and teeth and taste. Ianthe's right hand went unnerringly to Sioned's back to steady them both. Sioned put her own right hand up to Ianthe's hip – and flinched to find Ianthe's left hand already there, covering some hard, metallic object under the cloth.

 _Fool_ , thought Sioned, startling to her feet. Ianthe had as much as accused her of securing Rohan's favour; she was naïve to imagine the princess was here to talk.

Ianthe looked up at her and laughed. Sioned called Fire to flare up between them, warning Ianthe back, but Ianthe merely pulled from her dress a small, lacquered tube. To Sioned's wary silence, she uncapped it, shaking out innocent accoutrements: a thin, tied roll of parchment, a marking-stick, a tiny jar of color for her lips. "I suppose these are weapons," she mocked, placing the tube to the side. "Still suspicious? Very well."

She stood up and untied her dress with quick, deft movements, careless of Sioned's still-kindled flame. Knots and catches more sophisticated than those on any garments Sioned had ever worn – even as a child in River Run – gave way. Sunrunner's Fire bathed Ianthe's naked flesh gloriously in light.

"Still suspicious?" Ianthe taunted again.

"More so," Sioned said.

Ianthe laughed very low, delighted.

Perhaps it was the light that already framed Ianthe, but Sioned had a vivid image of the princess just like this, as she would be on her bridal night, stepping out of her fine gowns for Rohan. A superstitious shudder went through her – for was this not literally a vision in Fire, before her?

She supposed Sunrunner custom to be an advantage here – she knew herself as a woman, and what she desired in bed with a lover, while Ianthe was apparently ignorant. But that had not been a shy or uncertain kiss. She wanted, impulsively to test Ianthe; to see what the princess looked like when abandoned to her desires. Here, lying wanton and heedless on the dress she'd worn while flirting with Rohan earlier today.

"Exquisite," she murmured, surveying Ianthe with as much attention as Ianthe had given her a moment before. Letting the Fire fade into the air between them, she gripped Ianthe's hip lightly – just where the metal vial had hung a moment before – as if to test that the princess was flesh and only flesh. She ran fingernails up Ianthe’s side to her shoulder, as Ianthe stood calmly under her attentions, wearing an arrogant smile. Then she let the same hand eddy down across Ianthe’s breasts, across the dark aureoles, across Ianthe's flat stomach – bringing nails to bear for just a moment as she imagined Ianthe bearing Rohan's heirs – and down, seeking wetness behind a veil of soft, dark hair.

Ianthe, who had shuddered as Sioned's hand swept across her stomach, buckled at the knees as Sioned’s fingers found her cunt; smiling almost viciously, Sioned took full advantage to press her down into the bed, muffling the princess's gasps with Sioned’s own breath. The free hand that had guided Ianthe down was now busy with her breasts, and she called Air to follow softly where her fingers went. She stroked Ianthe, dipping rhythmically over Ianthe's pelvic bone and below, first softly, then, after a long, teasing while, more firmly, fingers slipping through Ianthe's moisture in lazy, sure figures of eight. Ianthe moaned, jerked her head sideways, bit Sioned's shoulder; Sioned still smiled, feeling the princess clench underneath her hand.

Three full breaths later, Ianthe blinked up at her, making a poor pretence of nonchalance. "You'll have to show me how you do that," she murmured.

"Of course," Sioned purred. Up on her knees beside Ianthe, she untied her own skirt, pulled the layers aside, and, spreading her thighs, made short work of her own pleasure. Ianthe raised herself onto her elbows to watch in avid silence.

"Satisfied?"

"Are you?" Ianthe replied.

Sioned trailed a careless hand over Ianthe’s body, teasing aftershocks out of sensitive flesh. "You haven't said what I'd gain from stepping back from Rohan," she said. "If he really does want me as his princess. The man – hm. But it's hard to be indifferent to the position of princess of the Desert."

"It's what we wouldn't… Oh," Ianthe said, perhaps not unable to speak, but more willing to concentrate on Sioned's busy hands. "It's what we wouldn't ask of you."

"Oh?" mimicked Sioned.

"Loyalty," said Ianthe coolly. "You think I'm far too cunning to hold to an allegiance... but I can't imagine that being princess and Sunrunner both would be easy for you."

Rolling closer, draping herself across Sioned's knees, the princess captured Sioned's hand and pulled it down greedily between her own thighs again, fucking herself with Sioned's fingers, her rings, sighing her release.

"Andrade sees her legacy in your children," Ianthe said finally, "just as Roelstra will see his in mine. And somehow I think you'll find it harder to throw off your chains than I will.

"Of course," she added, almost kindly, "it's easier that you don't love Rohan, isn't it?"

She smiled, heavy-lidded, up at Sioned's blank expression.

"Of course, if you did have some affection for him… You'd be at hand, at Stronghold, to keep me honest," she murmured. "Perhaps I'd even let him father a child on you... A _faradhi_ heir, now that would be a freak, a threat that other princes might not let thrive... But the child of a concubine might grow his own way."

Sioned clung to one word in that absurd and outrageous speech. "Let," she said, wrathful. And: "I am no man's concubine."

"Nor woman's?" Ianthe laid a kiss on her stomach, smiling.

"You see what I mean by the long game, Sioned?" Ianthe continued. "I trust that I can keep him, no matter what you do... and you can play, if you like, for the keeping... of me, or of Rohan, or of the castle itself. Or of honor to the rings you wear." Rings that now glistened with the signs of Ianthe's pleasure.

"What might you know of honor, Ianthe?" Sioned challenged.

The princess laughed. "What you succeed in teaching me, Sunrunner," she said. "Might that be our new deal?"


End file.
